Actually, I meant 'free' in both senses, but mostly in the sense of 
'free of charge'.  I hate to be blunt, but I think it's pretty safe to 
say that Ubuntu, Koha, GIMP, OpenOffice, Joomla and even the option of 
Linux itself would never exist or have gained traction and a developer 
base if these products were not freely available.  Groovix and Userful 
are selling proprietary public-use computer management packages at a 
higher cost than their XP equivalents.  If an open source LTSP solution 
were available under Linux (as in the Edubuntu package for schools) I 
would be much happier about recommending Linux as a solution for 
public-use computers in small to medium-sized independent public 
libraries.  

Again, I would invite those interested in providing help on this project 
to look at the feature list of 'Time Limit Manager' from Fortres -- 
that's what I want in an LTSP package.  (As an analogy, remember that 
Koha was once just an idea floating around in some idealistic New 
Zealander's head.)

http://www.fortresgrand.com/products/tlm/tlm.htm

Cheers,
-- Darrell


Erik Hetzner wrote:
> At Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:28:44 -0800,
> Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>   
>> Darrell Eifert wrote:
>>     
>>> There are commercial options from Groovix or Userful, but that pretty 
>>> much defeats the practical goal of lowering IT costs, or the 
>>> ideological goal of moving to free and open-source applications.
>>>
>>>       
>> I have a hard time considering "free" (as in "not paying for") as 
>> ideological. If linux is a good desktop, the "freeness" is icing on the 
>> cake. (And it's only free as in the purchase price; you still pay in 
>> some way to maintain it.) If you need to purchase apps to make your 
>> library work as it should, then you should budget for that. I think we 
>> need to see "free" and "open source" as two different properties that 
>> MAY intersect but do not necessarily intersect.
>>
>> kc
>> (who prefers linux to windows, and is looking forward to being able to 
>> purchase my favorite apps for linux as they become available)
>>     
>
> I think that Darrell probably meant ‘free’ in the GNU sense:
>
> <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html>
>
> best, Erik
>   
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ;; Erik Hetzner, California Digital Library
> ;; gnupg key id: 1024D/01DB07E3
>   

-- 
-------------------------------------
Darrell Eifert
Head of Adult Services
Lane Memorial Library, Hampton NH

"Beware the man of only one book"
Old Latin proverb